The Crystal Palace traces the site of The Crystal Palace Theatre in Maungawhau, Tāmaki Makaurau. The artist Ilish Thomas’s grandfather purchased a stake in this theatre in the 1970s, now, two generations later, the cinema has been consigned to oblivion amidst urbanisation and the burgeoning discourse of property possession.
Thomas’s film captures the interior and exterior of the theatre alongside the chudel, a female ghost from Gujarati folklore. A voice, sounding like a shadow of the past and a phantom of the future, asks the chudel for the way in. Like a beam of light emanating from a projector, the chudel wanders through the theatre, projecting herself onto the empty seats and overlapping with the building itself. Through the figure of the chudel, who in folklore often suffers a tragic death and returns to seek retribution against surviving kin through property or finances, Thomas revisits the haunting nature of 'property possession.'
Mirroring the chime that opened the video, at the end of the film, a sudden chime of a bell resonates like an awakening from the dream of cinema, leaving a lingering echo in our ears as it vanishes along with the chudel.
The Crystal Palace was originally commissioned by The Physics Room, November 2025, and is presented at Te Tuhi in May 2026 as an expanded installation, with thanks to Jane Wallace and The Physics Room.
→ Opening event
About the artist
Ilish Thomas is an artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau, whose practice explores the complexity of South Asian diasporic identity through themes of whakapapa, memory, grief, loss, and belonging. Working across textiles, video, audio, and other archival strategies, they engage modes of storytelling and oral histories as tools for cultural navigation and mediation. Central to her work is a focus on ‘in-betweenness’ and of generating new political imaginaries.